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Stem Cell Patent Torpedoes Research
g8orade writes: "This story says the University of Winsconsin owns patents that may prevent anyone spending that federal money soon. "As they carry out President Bush's plan for government financing of embryonic stem cell studies, federal health officials confront a daunting challenge: U.S. patent 6,200,806, a claim to the human embryonic stem cell." Originally in the NYT, this is a link to the not free account-requiring Charlotte Observer."
The patent
by the isolation of ES cell lines from two primate species, the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) and the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta).
-- the patent It looks like he might have been looking to patent embryonic stem cells of those species of primates, not human stem cells.
Do you like German cars?
Research at the Montreal Neurological Institute has revealed that there is an alternative source for stem cells. The source is from the skin of adult rodents, and they believe that this will also be possible with humans. The added advantage is that these stem cells would not be rejected when used in building organs for replacement.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So why would anyone keep using embryonic stem cells?
Here's a link to another story in the Capital Times (in Madison, Wisconsin). It puts more emphasis on interviews with researchers at the WARF. They claim that they are being very responsible with a patent, far more so than a private corporation would be if it owned the patent.
Unfortunately, the practice of licensing out research to private corporations has become common practice at the University of Wisconsin and other big research universities. Grad students sometimes do the work on research where the company gets to keep all IP gained from the research.
The problem is that the state keeps cutting our funds every year, so the university constantly has to search for new sources of funding. The administration sees private companies as a source for this research money. However, the gain from private grants, etc., is often offset by the expenses the UW incurs by building new facilities for this corporate-owned research. We still end up footing huge bills, but then the public doesn't own the result.
The researchers do have a point: at least a university research institution owns this patent, and they are concerned with the benefits of research, not profiteering. Many patents from university research now go to corporations. For example, earlier this year some UW researchers were given "free" access to Third Wave Technologies' proprietary Invader OS in exchange for promising Third Wave the right to develop any discoveries, which I assume means pursuing patents based on the UW researchers' work.